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Sunday, April 29, 2012

Today is my day on the Garden Party Blog Hop hosted by Jennifer at Sewhooked. I have designed a paper pieced Butterfly block. Maybe my subconscious knew that my daughter was having a girl and made me design a butterfly pattern! This one is different than those I showed you in the last post however. I had planned on making this block into a mini quilt to show but just ran out of time with moving and a new grandbaby and all. It's on my to-do list though and I will show it when it's done.

Garden Party Butterfly

You can download your FREE pdf copy of the block pattern here. If you have never paper pieced before, Jennifer has a great tutorial here.

If you would like to try paper piecing with freezer paper, check out these two different techniques -here and here.

In addition to the FREE pattern, I am giving away two books-Butterflies and Blooms andFast, Fun & Easy Scrapbook Quilts. To enter, leave a comment letting me know which book you would like. If you leave a no reply comment, I can't contact you so please leave an e-mail address if necessary. Two winners will be chosen at random on May 6th at 8:00 p.m. CDT. I will email the winners and announce it on my blog.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Kinsey Claire was born yesterday. She is my fourth granddaughter and my daughter's fifth child. We women now outnumber the men by one! Before Kinsey was born, I had three grandsons and three granddaughters.

Kinsey and Grandma

We didn't know the sex of the baby before Kinsey was born so I didn't start a quilt for her. Now that she's here, I know I need to make another butterfly quilt because I've made one for each of her three older sisters.

Macy's quilt

Lainey's quilt

Lylie's quilt

The pattern is from a Buggy Barn book entitled "Celebrated Craziness" and the pattern is called Butterflies. As you can tell, I've assigned each girl her own color. I wonder what color Kinsey will be? I better check with her Momma!

For the whole month of April, Jennifer at Sewhooked has been featuring a different pattern designer every day on her blog. Each designer has designed a paper pieced pattern and will post it for free on their assigned day. The only guidelines were the theme "Garden Party" and the size, 10" finished blocks. There are some great patterns posted so far. My day is April 29th so check back to see my interpretation of the theme and get your free pattern.

Jennifer is also giving away a prize every week and several of the designers are having giveaways along with their free patterns. So,click here to go to the Garden Party Blog Hop and pick up some free patterns. If you have never paper pieced before,there are alot of great tutorials posted on the web. There are a few newer methods since I learned to paper piece too. If you tried paper piecing before and didn't like it, try a different method.

On a different note, we found a house!! It's only 2 blocks from where we live right now which is also two blocks closer to my quilting buddy Linda of L&R Designs Quilting. So, at some point, there will be lots of quilting going on. We take possession of our new home on April 27th but don't have to be out of our current home until May 15th so we have time to do alot of updating. I have been planning a new kitchen and bathrooms as well as picking out appliances, flooring, paint colors, etc. I plan to show before and after pictures of the remodel as we go along so this blog may be more about decorating than quilting for awhile as I am an Interior Designer when I'm not quilting.

And my daughter is due to have baby #5 on April 26th!! Lots of stuff going on besides quilting.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Where does the time go? We are back from our cruise to Catalina Island and Ensenada, Mexico. The trip went well as far as planes and buses and such being on time. The weather was not too warm but it was very nice to be off work and not have access to phones or email or the internet. This was self imposed because you really can have access to all of that if you want to, for a price, but I just wanted a break from it all. If you have never been on a cruise, I think it's the most relaxing vacation you can have. You don't have to take care of anything. You can eat as much as you want whenever you want and sleep as much as you want too. I took a nap everyday! I highly recommend that.

We went on an excursion at each stop on the cruise. We did some sightseeing by bus on Catalina Island and took a cooking class at the Mango Mango cafe in Ensenada. Our chef, Jesus, taught us make salsa, enchiladas and tostadas which ended up being our lunch. Fun time overall. This was cruise #5 for me and believe it or not our room was on deck #5!

On our stop in Denver on our way to California for the cruise, we visited the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, CO. The display was entitled, "Male Call", and all the quilts were made by men. Since my husband has decided he would like to learn to quilt, he was quite interested to see these quilts. At the quilt shop in Golden, I bought my first charm pack! It's very hard to find a charm pack or any other pre-cut at a quilt shop in Iowa for some reason.

Before leaving on the ship, I tried to send out a free pattern to everyone that had left a comment during the Blog Hop Party. However, there were several no reply bloggers that I can not get an email address for. So, please email me here with your email address if you left a comment but did not receive your free pattern.

We have been looking at a lot of houses since we got back so not much time for sewing lately. I did cut up some more scraps last night with my quilting buddy. I needed to keep busy so I could think about something other than if the offer we put in on a house was going to be accepted or not. I don't know when I'll be able to start a new sewing project but I still have some finished projects to show yet. Some day soon I will be able to show you how I set up my new sewing room. Just need to find a house first!